Does What's on the Inside REALLY Count?
by EvilFuzzy9
Summary: Wait, hasn't the series proper already done this kind of plot twice? Eh? Why are we doing it a third time? Ehhh?
1. Chapter 1

**Does What's on the Inside REALLY Count?**

A _Gintama _thingy

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

When Gin-san woke up that morning, he noticed something very unusual.

The world was incredibly blurry. Unbelievably so. He couldn't see clearly further than a few inches from his own face. Just holding his own hand up at arm's length was enough to make his fingers vanish into an indistinct flesh-colored splotch.

"Maaaan," he groaned, squinting at his surroundings and trying to distinguish one thing from the other. "What the heck did I _drink_ last night...? I can't see shit."

It was odd, though. Even as Gin said this, he realized that his head didn't hurt at all like it should have. In fact, if anything his body felt strangely..._ unremarkable_.

Which was a damn weird thing to feel, by all accounts.

But he shook his head nonetheless and got up out of his futon. The walls were an usually bright and cheery mix of colors around him, but Gin shrugged that off readily enough. It wouldn't be the first time he'd woken up in a strange place. Hell, that was practically a bi-weekly occurrence.

His eyesight vexed him, though. And did the world seem a little bigger than he remembered it?

Frowning peevishly, Gin walked out the door. He had to grope through the air to find his way, but he managed well enough.

"Damn, damn, damn..." he muttered, squinting to the point that his eyes were barely slits. "I _knew_ I shouldn't have drunk that Madao's damn home brew... of course he would've fucked something up with the recipe and made me go blind..."

Gin reached the wall of the room, and started feeling across it for the door. His hands knocked down a poster or two in their search, but he didn't really care about that. All he wanted was to get out of here and go kill Hasegawa for giving him that shoddy moonshine.

His fingers crawled across the thin walls, Gin muttering irritably to himself, until finally he found what he was looking for.

The shoji door slid open.

Gin moved to exit the room, his hands stretched out before him, groping through the air for any obstacles.

Unfortunately for him, he found two. They were small and nothing worth writing home about, but even three-quarters blind Gin could see the wrath in Otae's eyes the instant he laid hand on her bosom, flat or not.

She even seemed to literally, physically tower over him in her fury.

How odd.

Unfortunately, Gin-san didn't have much time to think on that before he felt the first blow to his face.

"Oho?" came Otae's voice as Gintoki crumpled to the ground at her feet. He could hear the fury in her tone, even if she disguised it with a layer of sugary sweetness. "What's this? Just where do you think you're putting those hands of yours, Shin-chan?"

Gintoki, lying in a heap on the floor, blinked.

_Eh?_ he thought. _What did she just call me...?_

A shadow fell over his body.

"Even if you're my baby brother..." said Otae Shimura, deathly quiet. "...THAT IS STILL ABSOLUTELY UNFORGIVABLE!"

Gin-san felt a sharp pain.

Then everything went black.

* * *

When Shinpachi woke up that morning, it was to the mother of all headaches. His temples were throbbing, his sinuses whinging, stabbing pains shooting through every part of his head. He felt as though someone had lopped his head off, thrown it into a trash compactor, then sloppily glued it back onto his shoulders.

The sunlight burned his eyes, even when they were closed.

"Ugh..." he groaned miserably. "What happened last night...? Did Kagura-chan beat me over the head or something?"

He winced, clutching a hand to his forehead.

"Owowow..." he muttered, whimpering as he forced a strangely sore and weary body into an upright sitting position. His back hurt. His feet felt sore. His stomach was roiling and rumbling ominously. He felt aches and pains of the like which he had never even dreamed of, and it was all he could do just to keep from collapsing back onto his futon.

...Except this wasn't his futon, was it?

Even as he was wincing and sitting himself up, Shinpachi noticed two odd things.

One: this was not his room. And, two: he could actually _see_.

He actually raised a hand to his face, again, just to make sure he hadn't fallen asleep with his glasses on. And, nope. He hadn't.

He wasn't wearing glasses.

But he could still _see_.

Shinpachi's heart skipped a beat, as he realize two other things.

One: this was _Gin-san's_ room. And, two: there was no way that he could ever just wake up with his terrible eyesight cured.

"Eh?" said the teen. "You can't be serious. We've already done this kind of plot _twice_, right?! Once in the anime, and once with that arc in the manga? Although I never actually got someone else's body... and was just put inside my glasses, instead..."

Shinpachi, in Gin's body, frowned.

"...Huh... a-actually, now that I think about it, most of the really crazy plots are like that, aren't they...? Whether it's bodies being switched... genders being switched... or even stands being switched... I'm usually the one being left on the sidelines for the sake of a cheap joke, aren't I...?"

His face fell.

"I... really wish I could say that was something meaningful..." he said, sighing. "But, probably... it's just to keep me as boring as possible, isn't it...?"

A vein became visible in Gintoki's forehead, driven by Shinpachi's irritation.

"WELL NOT THIS TIME, DAMMIT!" he shouted to the sky. "I'M GONNA BE EVERY BIT AS INTERESTING AS EVERYONE ELSE! I'LL SHOW EVERYONE THAT I CAN BE WAY MORE THAN JUST A FOUR-EYED STRAIGHT MAN, GODDAMMIT...!"

His booming voice reverberated throughout the apartment, causing Sadaharu to let out a mighty YIP from the living room, and Kagura to shout at them to _shut up, aru!_

Shinpachi breathed heavily for a moment, determination in Gin's eyes.

A beat.

He looked around at Gin-san's messy room.

"Ahh, but I suppose I really should tidy up in here, first..." He shook his head. "What a pigsty."

With that said, Shinpachi got out of bed and got to work.

* * *

A/N: I can't be the only one whose noticed that, wherever possible, Shinpachi seems to get left out of really participating in the crazier plots like body-swapping or gender-swapping. And he usually isn't shown as any kind of participant in most of the big, serious fights even though, by this point, he has achieved victories of one kind or another against everyone from Kyuubei, to Nizo the Butcher, to Pirako, and even Obi Hajime. So obviously you can hardly call him weak.

Personally I'd like to think there's a dramatic or literary reason for all of that, like that all of the major fights he's been in have been ones directly tied to his character development, and are part of his journey into becoming a man and a samurai. Because I **do** feel like one of the big overarching themes of the manga is that of apprenticeship, insofar as Shinpachi seeking _bushido_ under Gin-san's wing. But most people seem to treat him like a secondary or even tertiary character, instead of part of the core Odd Jobs Power Trio.

Haha, poor, poor, Patsuan... I guess if nobody else cares that much for you, then I'll just have to write as wide a variety of fic with you as I can! Hohoho! Whatever it takes to make people appreciate that there are three Yorozuya!

... ... ... this author's note doesn't actually have that much to do with the contents of the fic, does it...? *sweatdrop*

**Updated: **3-3-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


	2. Chapter 2

**Does What's on the Inside REALLY Count?**

A _Gintama _thingy

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

When Gintoki Sakata awoke, it was to the mother of all headaches. His temples were throbbing, his sinuses whinging, stabbing pains shooting through every part of his head. He felt as though someone had lopped his head off, thrown it into a trash compactor, then sloppily glued it back onto his shoulders.

And when he opened his eyes to see the face of Tae Shimura smiling menacingly down at him, the man wondered if maybe this wasn't what happened.

"O...Otae...?" he groaned, feeling the intense pains stabbing through his poor, abused noggin. "What are you doing in my house?"

A vein bulged visibly in the young woman's forehead.

"Ah...? Shin-chan, what do you think you're saying?" said Tae in a low, dangerous tone. "If anything, I'm the one who should be asking you that question. Hmmm? Don't you think it's time for you to move out and find your own place in the world? No woman would want some shiftless, Odd Jobs-working, idol-worshiping, still-living-with-his-big-sister loser as a husband."

Gin's left eye twitched.

"What's wrong with being an Odd Jobs?" he snapped. "And who are you calling _Shin-chan_, eh?"

"You, of course," said Tae to the second question. "And what isn't?" she replied to the first with her own.

Gin glared at the woman, feeling too irritated to care about how suicidal this was.

"You really are a piece of work, oy," he muttered. "In what way do I look like _Shinpachi_, woman?!"

Tae brandished a Naginata, drawing the weapon seemingly from hammerspace. For a moment, Gin thought she was going to stab him. But then she moved the blade so that the side of it was facing him.

Light gleamed off of steel, flashing in Gin's eyes for a moment.

Then he saw his reflection.

His plain, unremarkable, glasses-wearing reflection.

Gin screamed at the top of his lungs, in the shrilly keening voice of Shinpachi Shimura.

* * *

Shinpachi Shimura, in Gintoki Sakata's body, was dressed in an apron, wearing latex gloves and a bandanna over his hair as he flicked the long handle of the feather duster. Allergenic particulate rose up in billowing clouds from beneath Gin's desk. The hardwood underside of the fixture had clearly not been cleaned in a very long time.

The teen-in-a-grown-man's-body hummed cheerfully to himself as he cleaned, swishing the feather duster this way and that. Gin-san's usually dull and unfocused eyes gleamed with a youthful verve, no longer looking quite so much like the peepers of a dead fish. Shinpachi was smiling.

"_She'll be coming around the mountain when she comes_..." he sang to himself with Gin's voice, not quite as bad as Shinpachi's singing would usually be.

The office of _Odd Jobs Gin-chan_ was, at a glance, and in a word, now _spotless_. Windows were so clean one could have been forgiven for thinking that the frames which held them were actually empty, tatami mats diligently beaten free of all dust and contaminants, hardwood floor polished, couch cushions removed and vacuumed of crumbs.

Shinpachi had collected three thousand five hundred and thirty seven yen in loose change, just cleaning up all of this. While he was already basically the only one keeping the Yorozuya's office spic and span, even Shinpachi had never had a chance to clean the place up this thoroughly. Gin-san and Kagura-chan were always getting underfoot, actively making his job harder. But now Shinpachi WAS Gin-san, and Kagura-chan was still asleep.

And Gin's height allowed him to reach places he never could have gotten to, before.

"_She'll be coming around the mountain, she'll be coming around the mountain, she'll be coming around the mountain when she comes_..." he sang, only a little off-key.

* * *

"Why am I stuck in Patsuan's body?" whined Gin to himself, limping pathetically down the streets of Kabukicho. "Why can't I ever get stuck in the body of a cute girl? I mean, I know there was that one time, but that was just a female version of myself. Not really the same thing, right?"

He then paused, the boyish and plain face of Shinpachi Shimura grotesquely swollen and covered in ugly bruises. Gin was leaning on an old, beat up waster from the Kodokan Dojo, using it to support his body. He had a thoughtful expression, one foot lagging consistently behind the other as he made his progress slowly down the street.

"...although I _did _have a very nice rack..." he mused a moment later, puffy and swollen cheeks reddening a tad as he reminisced

Then he sighed, swinging his bad leg forward in a narrow arc. The limb appeared stiff and inflexible, and Gin winced visibly when he set it down and moved his other foot. Even putting as much of his weight onto the bokuto as he could, walking still hurt him a great deal.

"Owowowow..." muttered the man-in-a-teen's-body. "That hurts. Stupid woman. That really hurts, doggone it!"

Gin made his way slowly to his destination, whining quietly to himself.

"Dang, dang, _dang_," he hissed through grit teeth, even as his bruises slowly receded, and swelling gradually went down. "Why's that woman gotta be such a brute, oy? Is this what Patsuan has to put up with every morning? Is this how his beloved Ane-ue treats him?"

He winced, feeling his shoulder rotate painfully in its socket. It had taken Gin a surprising amount of effort to pop the thing back in after Tae so rudely dislocated it, and it had hurt him far more than he would have expected.

"Sheesh, when this all back to normal I think I'll give the poor bastard some of my old porno mags," Gin muttered, massaging his sore shoulder... well, it was Shinpachi's shoulder, technically, but he was borrowing it for the time being. "No man should have to suffer under the reign of such a tyrannical beast. Not without moral support, at least."

Sighing, the man in a teen's body felt around in Shinpachi's pocket for Shinpachi's wallet, which contained five thousand of Shinpachi's hard-earned yen.

He looked up at the signboard of an infamously sleazy, anything-goes kind of cabaret club, _Eel XXX Cave Paradise_.

Shinpachi's face, back to normal by now thanks to the remarkable healing rate afforded to victims of "comedic" violence, was split in two by a grin that was the exact opposite of innocent.

"It'd be the least I could do," muttered Gintoki Sakata in Shinpachi Shimura's voice. "To show him my thanks."

Gin, as Shinpachi, walked into the establishment, strolling nonchalantly right past a poster, plastered with a black and white photograph of the wavy-haired samurai, that said:

DO NOT SERVE THIS MAN

UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

Innocently whistling to himself, Gin walked boldly into a world of illicit delights.

* * *

A/N: I dunno, figured I might try updating this. Not much else I have to say.

**Updated: **3-24-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


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